Pharmaceutical Industry News from the Wall Street Journal

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Pfizer CEO Cites Public’s ‘Legitimate Anger’ at Corporations
Speaking to a roomful of CEOs in Boston yesterday, Jeff Kindler said corporations must face the “real and legitimate anger” of the public and regain lost trust, according to the Connecticut newspaper the Day. “When the majority don’t trust you, they will find a way to force you to change,” he said.

Merck To Supremes: Investors Should Have Sued Us Sooner
Here’s what a lawyer for Merck told the Supreme Court yesterday:

… there was abundant information in the public domain as of 2001 at least suggesting the possibility that [Merck] had engaged in securities fraud.

The company is taking that somewhat surprising position to bolster its case in investor lawsuits that allege the company downplayed the safety risks of Vioxx. Specifically, Merck has argued that investors waited too long to file the suits. (Investors have two years to sue from the time they should have suspected fraud.) So the lawyers on both sides are arguing over when investors had enough information to file a lawsuit.

By the way, besides arguing that investors should have sued sooner, Merck is also arguing that there isn’t enough evidence for investors to make a case against the company, the WSJ notes.

How a Decades-Old Drug Is Still a Patented Blockbuster
Abbott isn’t likely to face generic competition on its cholesterol drug TriCor until at least March, 2011, according to an SEC filing the company put out yesterday. Filings like this come out all the time, but this one is particularly striking because the key compound in TriCor, generically known as fenofibrate, was discovered in the 1960s and hit the market in Europe in 1975. Drugs that old are almost always generic.